Zillow Group (ZG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. I think we're live. All right. So we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm Stephen Ju with the UBS Internet team. Sitting to my left and to your right is Jeremy Hofmann, who serves as the CFO of Zillow. So welcome to the conference, Jeremy, and thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

All right. Awesome. So let's just kind of start at the top. So Zillow, for the longest time, has been known for its brand and large audience and engagement assets. So the big question has always been, when and how you would truly leverage that into building a big, sustainable and profitable business. So perhaps you can touch on the arc of the story so far and where you are in that journey with the housing super app.

Sure. Yes. So Zillow has been around for almost 20 years at this point. I'd say the first 15 or so years, the big focus was really building a brand, building an audience, building something that we thought consumers would love and also attracting real estate professionals to meet those consumers. So that was really the focus for the first 15 years or so, and we monetized via traditional lead generation primarily. Over the last, call it, 5 years or so, we've really focused on trying to make transacting easier. So that's renting, buying, selling and financing. And we're doing that for a few reasons. One, we think the consumer experience is better when you have a more digital, more seamless, more integrated transaction, both on renting and in for sale. And two, it's a pretty big business opportunity. A lot of the dollars end up being changing hands at the transaction. So the combination of both of those things has made us focus on really helping movers move more easily. And it's translated to really good financial results. So Q3, we grew total revenue 16% year-over-year. And that was in a really bad housing market, which has been persistent for the last few years at this point, but at some point, will change. But we grew revenue 16%. We grew our for sale revenue, which is a combination of residential and mortgages. We grew that 10% in the credit housing market, and then it was coupled with 41% growth in rentals. So the combination of the business that we've built is far more diversified than it was 5 and 10 years ago. And it's really a nice growth algorithm, not just in 2025, but well into the future. And we're doing all of that with good cost discipline. So we grew revenue 16%. We also expanded our margins by 200 basis points in the quarter.

When I hear super app, when I hear companies talk super app. I always think there's multiple ways to skin the cat. Yes, so you probably can't talk about the entirety of your product development road map right now, but there's probably other things coming forward because you have a large amount of intent-driven traffic that's already there, right?

Yes, that's right. And we feel really good about what we've done over the past 4 or 5 years. We think the growth algorithm is well set to hit the midterm targets we put out earlier this year. We're also not stopping there. Like we do believe that the brand that we are, where we live with consumers affords us the opportunity to do far more than even we're doing today. And we're setting up the company to grow, not just through this mid-cycle environment or mid-cycle targets but well beyond that. We announced a product called Zillow Pro probably 1 month, 1.5 months ago at this point, which is basically taking all of the goodness that we've started to build for consumers and agents in our Enhanced Markets and bringing those further out to all agents and all customers. So that starts to get exciting well beyond even the stuff that we're talking about.

Yes. I mean within Zillow Pro, I mean there's the concept of sphere of influence, right? So can you talk about that a little bit and how you're expanding to support an agent's sphere of influence, yes.

Yes. And Zillow Pro is really early. Again, we announced it about a month ago, and we're in alpha, not even beta yet. So there's a lot to learn. But what we're trying to do is we've done quite well building great consumer experiences for folks that come to Zillow and great -- partner with great agents to fulfill for those consumers. Zillow Pro effectively allows us to do that for all agents and all consumer types. So it's Follow Up Boss, which is a leading CRM that we acquired a few years ago. We're taking that as the underlying product. We're adding agent branding and premium profiles. We're adding the ability for agents to connect with not only customers that they met on Zillow, but also customers that are in their sphere of influence, which is outside of Zillow and use all the tools that we've offered now bring it to your entire customer set. And that's pretty powerful, right? And you basically step back, and Zillow will be continuing to provide great consumers, transaction-ready consumers for these agents. And now we're also giving them tools to really run their entire business.

Okay. So you're serving as sort of their digital agency. Is that too presumptuous a term or?

I think that's probably -- that's not how we think about it. I think let's provide great consumers folks that are looking to transact and then let's give you great tools to run your business.

Okay. Understood. I think Zillow has been executing pretty well on the housing super app and rolling on Enhanced Markets during what we've called, I think, term that bouncing along the bottom in the housing market, revenue growth, like you said, in the mid-teens, EBITDA margins are expanding. Rentals accelerated to plus 40% growth year-over-year and GAAP profitability. So what's driving the outperformance versus the industry?

It's been a really good couple of years for Zillow despite a challenging housing macro. And housing in the last 3 years, we've been stubbornly around 4 million homes sold per year and we're looking at the lowest level of housing turnover in the past 40-plus years. So it's been about as challenging environment for us to operate in, yet we are doing quite well, growing mid-teens, expanding margins. And the way we're doing it has been very consistent, and it feels very repeatable. So across our for sale business, we're continuing to expand these enhanced markets that's driving growth, continuing to expand Zillow Home Loans on the back of that enhanced market expansion that's driving growth, putting Follow Up Boss in more people's hands. Listing Showcase, our premium listing product has grown really nicely. That's up -- that's more than double in terms of new listings versus a year ago, and then that all comes with our new construction business, which is performing quite well. So across for sale, it feels like there are green lights everywhere. We're able to outperform the market. And then you couple that with the rentals business that is growing really nicely. That business has accelerated throughout this year. So we grew -- Q1, we grew 33% in rentals; Q2, 36%; Q3 was 41%, and we expect 40% plus growth for all of 2025. So when you put that all together, the growth algorithm feels really good, and it's one that we think is sustainable beyond 2025 as we look into 2026 and towards our mid-cycle targets.

Got it. Hitting some of those products one-by-one, I think, Enhanced Markets climbed to 34% of connections in the third quarter. And so what's been the hardest part of scaling that experience between product readiness, operational consistency or agent enablement? And what milestone signals should investors be looking for?

Yes. So our Enhanced Markets are effectively the go-to-market motion where all of the great consumer experiences and all of the great agent experiences come together. That's -- it's in these Enhanced Markets. We started this 3-ish years ago. It was in 4 markets for a while as we were just testing. We are now at a place where as of the end of Q3, we're at 34% of all of our connections are going through this experience. So we've scaled it quite nicely over the past few years, but there's plenty more for us to go do. I think a good mile marker for you all is just understanding what is the percentage of connections that is going through this experience, 34% in Q3, we expect 35% plus by year-end. And then our mid-cycle target -- midterm target is 75% plus. So we have more to go as we roll these out, but we're quite pleased with the ability to have moved faster than we were 3 and 4 years ago. From here, the governor to expansion is really making sure we're building the relationship between the Premier Agent partner and the Zillow Home Loans loan officer. That relationship has to be really good. And that's really incumbent upon us at Zillow to build a great mortgage experience. So that has to be a great consumer experience. It has to be a great partner experience. And you really only get one shot to make a first impression in mortgage, particularly in a housing environment that is as bouncing along the bottom as we've seen. So we've been really thoughtful on how fast we move to make sure that we're delivering on that mortgage promise.

Okay. I mean the home loans, the purchase originations rose 57% year-over-year, right? So is the primary driver of that growth what you just talked about? Or are there other factors that you can -- or leverage that you can pull to drive that growth?

I'd say the primary growth driver has been the Enhanced Market expansion. So as we turn more of the base of connections into this Enhanced Market experience, Zillow Home Loans comes alongside that and continues to grow quite nicely. We're seeing double-digit adoption rates across the entire Enhanced Market portfolio. So that is great. We're still pretty small, though, 57% year-over-year growth is excellent. We're thrilled to be able to do that in a tough housing market, but there's a lot more to go do from here. And the levers for growth will be continued Enhanced Market expansion, continuing to build really good affordability tools and finance first tools, folks that come to Zillow to get prequalified or preapproved before they go meet a real estate agent. That's another really interesting lever for growth. And then the Nirvana would be, we're doing really well with Zillow specific customers, and we start to get the opportunity to win business amongst real estate agents, their sphere of influence and the folks that they actually meet outside of Zillow.

Got it. Okay. Follow Up Boss, is that right, that has evolved into the CRM backbone for Enhanced Markets. And so what are the AI capabilities within Follow Up Boss that get you excited?

So we bought Follow Up Boss about 2 years ago now. It was a leading CRM and what we thought was the best CRM when we bought it back in late 2023. And we've just tried to supercharge it. So back then, I'd say there were probably about 50% of our Premier Agent preferred base was using Follow Up Boss. So obviously, a great installed base before we bought it. And we're now at a point where virtually everyone in preferred is using Follow Up Boss. So when you say backbone, that's right. It's really the underlying software that's powering our preferred partners and our Enhanced Markets. What we've been able to do, I think, is probably 2 things. One, we've really supercharged the product development with more AI features. And it's all around making an agent's life easier. You think about a real estate agent, they want to be closing deals. They want to be transacting. They want to be out with clients. They don't want to be doing menial tasks. They don't want to be writing call summaries. They don't want to be organizing task lists. They don't want to take notes on the call and then have to go write those down and put it in their CRM. We do all of that for them now via AI. So you have a great underlying feature set. You have a whole bunch of productivity tools that we've developed using AI. And then what's coming is starting to marry their Follow Up Boss data set with our Zillow consumer data set. When you put all those things together, it's a pretty compelling pitch to a real estate professional to be able to say, great CRM, a bunch of really cool AI features to make your life easier, and you can now start to use Zillow data to help you even further better understand your customer base.

Got it. All right. So rentals revenue, that grew 41% year-over-year. I think multifamily growth was 62%, I believe. Yes, so which drivers matters more for momentum carrying into 2026? Is it going to be a matter of just expanding the property count? I think you're now at, what, like 69,000 multifamily? Or is it a matter of you deepening the wallet share through upgraded ad packages or other products? Yes.

I think maybe just to step back on rentals and just what are we doing strategically because it is unique to the category. We're effectively trying to find and amass all of the rental listings in the country. And that's single-family homes for rent, that's apartment buildings as well. That is -- there's no MLS in rentals, right? There's no organizing central force to distribute content. So we're trying to be that. We're at a point now where we have 2.5 million active listings as of 9/30. That's the most in the category. But we still probably have 35%, 40% of all inventory to still go get. So we've amassed more than anyone else, but we're by no means complete on supply. That strategy, I think, is really compelling though because what the renter wants is to be able to see all the inventory, you see it all in one place. That's what we're trying to do. That's what we've been marching along for a long time now. And as you build that supply and you build that differentiated listing set, you can start to build differentiated consumer demand. So you start to see a 2-sided marketplace form as a result. And I would say the results that we are seeing in rentals are on the back of that 2-sided marketplace starting to spin. And the results, I think, have been strong throughout the year. We did grow, yes, 41% in rentals in Q3. Our property growth in multifamily, which is the big apartment buildings grew 47%, and our multifamily revenue grew 62%. So all of that is great. From here, we think we're still scratching the surface. So the opportunity continues to be add more supply. There's a whole bunch of multifamily buildings and homes for rent that we don't yet have on Zillow. We need to do that. We need to continue to deliver really good ROI to these partners in a way that they are interested in spending more money with us. So we will continue to do that as well. And then on the consumer demand side, just build product that allows renting to be easier, like that's still -- renting is a pretty hard process, and we should and are planning to develop programs to make renting -- product and programs to make renting easier for consumers as well.

Got it. So let's roll what we just talked about into, I guess, the forecast and expectations for next year. So I think you're projecting mid-teens revenue growth and margin expansion again next year despite the muted housing backdrop. So what's the underlying formula that makes all of that possible? And what are the more durable, I guess, levers in that algorithm that we're talking about? And how are you setting the stage for the next phase of Zillow's growth?

Yes. So what we said on the November call was we expect a similar formula for 2026. We'll obviously give updated guidance in February, but I want to at least give investors some flavor for what 2026 can look like. And the formula is pretty consistent, like we expect continued growth in for sale on the back of enhanced market expansion, Zillow Home Loans expansion, Follow Up Boss expansion, Showcase expansion. So that will sound boring in some ways because it is really just a continuation of what we've put in place. And then you couple that with a really good rentals business that continues to grow quite well, that allows us to feel confident that 2026 will look good regardless of what macro does and that's what we're planning for. That, I would say, is on the revenue side. And then on the cost side, we've been very consistent in the past 3 years that we think our fixed cost base is at a good place at this point. And we are basically saying, we are going to stay flat plus some inflation that inevitably comes in between salaries and software, et cetera. We've done that well in the last couple of years. We've done it well in 2025. We expect to do it well in 2026. And if we are disciplined on the fixed cost base, we continue to grow revenue. We are able to grow profits faster because so much of our cost base is in that fixed bucket.

Yes. A sort of a sideways question here, the eternal optimist that I am. I want to think about a housing market that's not kind of bouncing off the bottom here.

You and me both.

Yes. So what does that look like if we start to see some sort of recovery and the macro helps you instead of being sort of a hindrance?

Yes. I think it's an accelerant, too, for us. I won't say -- we wake up every morning and we expect to grow because of what we can control. And the team is really clear, we're really clear that don't wait for macro. Let's just keep growing, keep doing what we're doing. And mid-teens growth in a challenged housing market, we're really proud of. If and when the macro does come back, that's an accelerant. So maybe a way to think about it with respect to our mid-cycle targets, which we laid out earlier this year, we said there was $1 billion of organic revenue in for sale based on the strategy that we have without any macro recovery. We think there's $500 million plus of rentals revenue to go get based on the strategy that we're at right now. So that gives you $1.5 billion of organic. And then if and when housing gets back to a mid-cycle environment, we think that's another $1.3 billion of incremental revenue to us that would supercharge us, but we obviously like what we're doing regardless of what the macro does.

Got it. All right. So this is a tech and AI conference, so we got to talk about AI. All right. So I think all of us have seen Zillow as being the first real estate app being integrated to ChatGPT or a part of the slide deck that they presented. So how are you thinking about -- I guess that's another doorway for traffic to arrive on Zillow. What are the incremental opportunities there? And what should we be worrying about in terms of potential disruption?

Yes. We run very hard at new technology and any paradigm shifts, we will run at all of them. We did that with OpenAI. They had called us. I'm not going to get the date exactly right, but I want to say mid-September, maybe a little earlier than that and said, "Hey, we're going to have a demo day on October 7. We're giving you 5 weeks. Can you hang with us?" All right. Well, let's scramble the jets, get some of our best people on it, and we were able to do so. There were only a small handful of folks that were able to actually keep pace with them to get to that demo day. I think they started with north of 20, and they got whittled down to a small handful. And that speaks to me, not being a product manager or an engineer, just that the quality and speed that we can work with that we're able to develop at a pace that OpenAI is doing so. So we're really proud of that. When we think about the potential for what OpenAI, ChatGPT and other LLMs can do, we see it as opportunity. We think we have unique data, a unique strategy around transactions, a great brand and an engaged audience. And we think we work well with these folks rather than seeing it as a disruptive threat. Some of that is what I just articulated, and some of that also is real estate is a really complicated end vertical, right? It is a long shopping cycle. It is heavily regulated. It is very local. And it is a very infrequent transaction. So when you put all of that together, we feel really good that these -- like ChatGPT and the like are going to be opportunity for us to meet more customers. But ultimately, what we can provide within Zillow is far more powerful than what you can do off of Zillow. And then last but certainly not least is as we work closer with OpenAI and ChatGPT, we can take those learnings back and put them natively into Zillow sites and apps, too. So you can feel like the search experience, the transacting experience is far more LLM enabled than it was 1 year, 2 years, 3 years ago.

Yes. And speaking of what you're bringing in-house, right? So how are you deploying AI internally at the company with employees, not just external consumer-facing? And where do you see internally some of the benefits from this technology?

I think internally, we focus -- consumer features, operator features and employees are kind of our 3 big buckets of workflows. For employees, we're just making folks more efficient. And we're seeing that across the org, like each of -- within each function at the company, we have AI champions, and those folks are -- work very closely with our technology team to figure out where the best use cases. But ultimately, we find ourselves more efficient across the board. And that's really powerful, especially in an environment where we're rapidly developing product. Things are changing dramatically, and we're finding ourselves getting speed everywhere. So it's been a huge enabler there. And then internally, we also spend a lot of AI efforts on making our loan officers more productive. And we don't employ real estate agents, but we work very closely with the real estate agents. We look for ways to make AI more efficient for them to like the stuff we were talking about in Follow Up Boss.

And I think you hinted earlier that you're going to endeavor to keep the cost base, the fixed cost base at a relatively flat level. So is this a help in that regard?

I think it's a help, yes. I think it's been an enabler of more speed, more than I'd say we're taking cost out as a result. But it's definitely been a help to be able to look at these AI tools and know that everybody is getting faster and doing more work with the help of these tools.

Okay. So it makes it more agile. Yes, okay. And I think switching gears a little bit to the cash flows, I think you introduced a new free cash flow metric in the third quarter. So walk us through the thinking there.

Yes. It's just natural evolution of a company that is becoming a sustainable, profitable company. We wanted to make sure it was clear and investors had a clear visual on what our -- what cash we're generating, and we produced $295 million of cash year-to-date this year, but wanted to just make sure that folks had that metric at their fingertips as well as we just get bigger.

Got it. And I think you've also settled all of your convertible debt as well. So walk us through your capital allocation philosophy and as well as your thoughts on the stock-based compensation.

Yes. So we, in May, we retired the last of our convertibles. We're convertible debt free now. That was Priority 1 for capital structure in 2025. Priority 2 was to ensure that we were more than offsetting stock-based comp. So with a share repurchase, we've repurchased $438 million year-to-date in share repurchases and have been really pleased because we've been more than able to offset dilution. And just generally, I think the share base -- or the share buyback has been a great tool for us. We've spent more than $2 billion lifetime to date on the program at less than $50 a share. I think it's been really powerful. It's one that we'll continue to be opportunistic on going forward. When I think about how do we set up the capital base from here. We always want to have $1 billion-plus of net cash, just for opportunistic growth. And also for a rainy day if for some reason another pandemic happens or something like that. But then from there, we do look to use the share buyback as an important tool, particularly in times of dislocation.

Got it. Well, here's to hoping for a more cooperative macro going forward. But let's gaze into our crystal ball. So it's December of 2026. We're sitting here discussing what might have happened in the trailing 12 months, right? So what do you think we'll be talking about in terms of what Zillow has been able to accomplish in the trailing 12 months?

That's a good question. Very hard to put the crystal ball in times like this. But my hope is we're up here and a lot of what I've talked about today, we've made a ton of progress on. I feel like the strategy is quite sound. I think the execution has been quite good, but we also have a lot to do. So my hope and my expectation is we continue to grow revenues really nicely across for sale and rentals. We continue to do it with cost discipline, and we're sitting up here a year from now excited about what could come in 2027, plus all the new things we'll develop over the course of the next year.

Got you. All right. So we'll leave it there.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for the time.